Burghers, Breudhers and Bolo Fiado
“Making a Last Dutch Stand”
By the late Wilhelm Woutersz
The DBU, the spirited home to the last bastion of the "beleaguered" Burgher community, soldiers on in a last Dutch stand. But the weaponry for survival is culinary, not military, a legacy of the old Dutch East India Company, the VOC - Breudhers and their lesser floury satellites of Fuggetti, Koekjes and Poffertjes in this formidable arsenal the Breudher stood supreme.
"When good Burghers make Breudhers the raisins don’t sink to the bottom" my maiden aunt observed with some asperity. It was a recipe that defied description and you looked for it in vain in any cookery book. A good Breudher must rise and the secret of the "resurrected" Breudher was not a matter of virtue but of the virtuosity of the Burgher Grand Dames who got off their rocking chairs each Christmas, rolled up their raglan sleeves and got down to their seasonal trade of "making Breudhers". They did not bake or steam them. They simply made them, pure miracles with dough and yeast a perennial part of the Sri Lankan X'mas Board, enduring and endearing.
The lasting legacy is a Burgher birthright invested with its own innocent snobbery in a genealogical culinary line stretching from Altendorff to Zieglar with stops along the way to accommodate the lineage of Bartholomeusz, Holdenbottle, Keegal, Vander Straaten and perhaps a Woutersz or two - the line is unending.
The respectful company of Breudher makers grows smaller, passing away or "passed" to Australia or surviving to rejoice in a Christmas Cantata at the DRC. But the passage from Mount Lavinia to Melbourne and Bambalapitiya to Brisbane is half hearted and temporary. The heart lies closer home in the corner of a not so forgotten field that is forever Sri Lanka with its magnetic pull at Christmastime and here the home spun philosophy abides - by their Breudhers ye shall know.
(From the DBU Bulletin December 2007)
